Jonathan’s gravel bike

Jonathan might be the tallest rider (6’7″) that I have built for so far! He asked me to create a gravel bike – we used a US-made Allied carbon fork, which pairs with the frame via a custom headset. There is clearance for 45mm tires (shown with 40mm tires on the Chris King carbon wheelset).

Mechanical shifting! No batteries here; Shimano GRX in 2x format provides a wide gear range, with internal routing for the cables. The rear brake hose is run internally through the downtube too.

For long rides, there are four bottle cage mounts and stealthy, internally brazed bosses for adding a framebag. Additional comfort on rough surfaces is provided by a Cane Creek suspension seatpost and Redshift suspension stem.

Lovely pearl white paint by Colorworks, and the final weight as shown is 20.6lbs.

I am extremely happy with how the bike turned out. It looks even better in person that it did in the photos you kindly shared with me during the build process – the way the white pearl paint changes in different light levels is awesome! With mass made bikes, it typically takes me several weeks of tinkering and often purchasing multiple new components to get them to a point when they feel like I want them to. After just a couple of rides I am happy to say that the bike that you built feels like it has been mine for years. I had scheduled a follow-up bike fit appointment, but at this point I am reluctant to change anything! When I was riding this weekend, I realized that I was not thinking about the bike at all for long periods time, which is the sign of a great bike in my opinion. On the road, with the slick tires and 2x gears, I don’t think it is any slower than my dedicated road bike. On gravel and light singletrack, the handling is a great balance of being confidence inspiring but at the same time make it really tempting to push on. I am really looking forward to riding it more. I truly enjoyed the whole process of working with you to distill what I wanted from the bike and to pick out individual components. The end result of this involvement and collaboration is a bike that is much more meaningful to me than a mass made bike ever could be!

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